Marco Polo’s Book Describes the Mongol Empire

In 1298, while confined together in a Genoese prison, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo recounted his travels across Asia to the romance writer Rustichello da Pisa. Polo had departed Venice in 1271 alongside his father and uncle, traveling overland across three years to reach the court of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan. He remained in China, much of the time in the service of the Yuan court, until setting out for Italy around 1291 or 1292. Rustichello recorded these recollections in Franco-Venetian, a northern Italian literary dialect blending Old French and Venetian, producing a manuscript alternately known as Devisement du Monde and The Book of the Marvels of the World.

The collaboration between an observant traveler and a professional romance writer shaped the text's enduring character. Modern scholars note that Rustichello employed a leisurely, conversational prose style and borrowed rhetorical formulas directly from his earlier chivalric romances. The opening salutation addressing emperors, kings, dukes, and marquises was lifted from an Arthurian romance, and Polo's second audience with Kublai Khan mirrored a scene depicting the arrival of Tristan at King Arthur's court. While such conventions satisfied medieval expectations for wonder and chivalry, Polo's core narrative offered an orderly survey divided into four books covering the routes through Central Asia, the administration of China, the eastern maritime coasts, and recent conflicts among Mongol factions.